My Most Memorable Whites

I opened Good Vitis with a post about my ten most memorable red wines. Then, I followed up with a post a few days later about the Wine Curmudgeon’s “winestream media” analysis that suggested the major American wine publications favored reds over whites by giving the former more 90+ point reviews than the latter. And now, I’m about to go through my most memorable white wines and there are, count em’, eight. My memorable red post originally had 16 reds but due to space I narrowed the list to 10. With the whites, I couldn’t even get to ten. Do I have a red wine bias?

Couple of things for consideration:

I’ve long drank more reds than whites

I’ve long appreciated reds more than whites

I bought my first white wine for aging within the last year

My experiences with the eight whites below have convinced me that my red wine bias is stupid. As someone who likes good wine, I’d been keeping myself away from a category of wine that offers experiences equally but also uniquely rewarding as the red one. These eight whites have collectively triggered a shift in my thinking about how to consider and approach white wine, with the key change being simply exposure to the levels of complexity and depth whites can achieve when done well. My cellar has shifted from 100% red to 85% red/15% white over the last year as I stock up on chardonnays and chenin blancs, and the trend will likely continue as I expand my chardonnay sourcing while also branching into age-worthy gruner veltliner. On to the wines!

For a very long time I was obsessed with Washington wine. While I still am to a very real extent, I’ve narrowed the Washington wineries I purchase down to around half a dozen as I become (1) more discerning about specific vineyards and winemakers and (2) more interested in other areas of the world. This initial focus on Washington limited my exposure to whites because the state’s wineries tend to focus their higher end products on the red end of the spectrum. Top wineries like Buty and Delille, for example, produce a range of fantastic wines that are light on the whites, and within the overall collection of fine Washington wines the red/white mix is heavy on the red. Part of this is I’m sure demand trends, but I’m quite curious to understand how much of this is the state’s ability to produce world class whites. That’s a story for another post.

These two wines certainly do show, however, that Washington can do world class whites. I first had Buty’s Bordeaux-esque blend in 2009 at a tasting at one of Seattle’s preeminent wine stores, McCarthy & Schiering, and it’s a vivid memory in which my entire attention was consumed by a “wow, so there is good white wine after all!” epiphany. I’ve had every vintage of this wine since and it’s among the top 5 wines I’ve consumed by volume. It’s a solid $25 purchase every time.

Delille’s Chaleur Estate Blanc is a more accurate version of a Bordeaux blend as it skips the Muscadelle, which makes the Buty a bit lighter and more approachable. While the Delille is certainly great at release (93-95 points annually since 2007 from Stephen Tanzer, Robert Parker and Wine Advocate) it really shines with a few years in the bottle. It’s a dense, concentrated and complex wine with a mouthfeel as comforting and satisfying as green tea with honey on a cold day. And at $38 SRP it’s not cheap, but it is very competitive at that price in terms of quality and ageworthiness. Drink the Buty in the first year or two after release, and the Delille 2-4 years after release. They’re both gorgeous.

This is the bottle of chardonnay that made me a chardonnay fan. My notes when I drank the first (of several) of these:

Nose: Very Bordeaux-like with straw and honey, this is a trip. Some of that vanilla, peach, and oak start to come through. Partial malolactic is apparent. So is the green apple, which is strong. Good limestone minerality, too. Very aromatic wine. Palate: Hard to discern between a Bordeaux and Chardonnay, really trippy. Very clean and crisp with some oak backbone and light toast, but not heavy or oaky or dominated by vanilla. Good acidity and fruit, predominantly apple and pineapple; maybe a little starfruit/lime acidity. Really appreciate the balance of acidity/crispiness and body, speaking to only partial malolactic treatment and great judgement in oak selection, barrel timing, and re-racking (it’s nicely settled and clearly has a defined personality). With additional air the lime sorbet gets stronger. Finish: it’s the acidity and citrus that ride it out. The body fades smoothly. This is a very good wine. 94 points

“Hard to discern between a Bordeaux and Chardonnay?” After the Buty and Delille blends, seems like a good gateway chardonnay for me, right? What made this one stand out was the lift it received from a solid streak of acidity that I hadn’t found paired with real complexity and good structure in any previous chardonnay I’d had. Lauren Ashton sadly hasn’t made a reserve since 2012.

Listen, I hate the generic New Zealand sauv blanc that’s flooded American wine stores, restaurants and bars as much as anyone; it’s become an epidemic. But this one is truly wild. My Cellartracker notes:

Spoiler alert: this is an exceptionally cool wine. The wild yeast makes this a truly unique wine with flavors and scents I’ve never tasted or smelled on any other wine, some of them unidentifiable. Nose: Savage. White peach, lemon curd. Unripe Starfruit tanginess. Dandelion. Wet stone. And stuff we can only identify as having to come from the wild yeast. Palate: very smooth with just a touch of graininess. Palate coating flavors that burst. Lots of sweet peace and rosemary up front, but it transfers into a light pucker in the back of the mouth with lemongrass flavors on a wave of bright acidity. And then of course some undefinable wild yeast flavors. Finish: very long lasting finish for a white. The acidity and peach carries on for a long, long time. As acid and peach fade, the lemon curd and grass emerge with an endearing sweetness. Overall this is a fantastic wine, a thinking drinker’s wine. It’s also fantastic with food, which brings out an extra layer of complexity. I need to find more of this. 94 points.

Incredibly complex just in the notes I could identify, and if those were all it offered then it would still be a fantastic bottle. But the wild elements that I couldn’t identify, they were smells and flavors I’d never experienced before, they put it over-the-top cool. Let me try to explain this a different way. Seven months prior to drinking this bottle, I went to Japan for the first time. Tokyo’s airport is a 45 minute drive outside the city, and the route takes you through mile after mile of rice patties. I’d never seen rice patties before in person, and they mesmerized me. All I wanted to do was walk through them and harvest rice; it just seemed like the most unadulterated way of engaging with nature. And then it hit me: I couldn’t remember the last time that I saw something for the first time. Think about it, when was the last truly unique experience you’ve had where even the context was totally new? My answer is the 2012 Greywacke Wild Sauvignon Blanc.

This was a serious “wow” wine. The 2009 is 99% as good, too, and the 2011 could well be better with a few more years (#vertical). I’d never had serious chenin blanc before this bottle, and I’m a true believer now. When done like this it has an incredibly full mouthfeel without developing any cloying sensation or residual sugar. Rather, it offers bright acidity and an incredible array of flavors. The result is a blend of the best traits of chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, Sauternes and viognier. Sadly, I took no notes when drinking this, but I have several of his wines aging now and will at some point review them, and I continue to build out my Morgat collection.

Category: craziest sensation

Winner: every nervous, tense Chablis I’ve had

Chablis falls into two categories for me: overly acidic and boring (bad Chablis), and so nervous you can’t turn your attention away (interesting and potentially great Chablis). I have my favorite producers (William Fevre, Francois Raveneu, Domaine Servin) and my favorite sites (Montee de Tonnere, Montee de Tonnere and Montee de Tonnere), but every Chablis that can’t seem to accept its awesomeness is the one for me. If you’ve experienced this, you know what I’m talking about it. If you haven’t, I can promise you that it will be the subject of a future post.

This wine, and each of the vintages of it that I’ve had, has stolen my heart. I haven’t had enough gruner yet to put my finger on exactly why it speaks to me, but if I had to guess it’s that when Birgit Eichenger makes this offering from Kamptal she blends awesome Chablis with remarkable petit mensang and viognier. That’s the best way I’ve developed to describe this wine. Here’s what I wrote about it:

This is a very young wine, to be clear. It’s great now but I wish I could have a bottle every six months for the next 10 years. Here’s what it’s like now:

Nose: banana, honeysuckle. Chalk, dandelion and a fungal/forest floor thing. Slightly yeasty. With air, Asian five spice comes out and it starts to remind me of mead. Palate: medium plus body and acidity. Slight sweetness. Skin tannin. Very structured, pleasing smooth medium viscosity. Meyer lemon, honey. Lime sorbet, cantaloupe. Cinnamon and nutmeg. Cascade hops and flinty minerality. Finish: persistent and rich. Overall a gorgeous wine with the skin tannins providing a platform for a lot of different flavors to dance on. This one evolved over time as it sat in the glass, it has a long life ahead of it over which I’d be surprised if it didn’t go through several changes. Very interesting and expressive. 92 points.

I’m pretty new to Jura and while every bottle I’ve had hasn’t spoken to me, they’ve all been very interesting in their unique expressions. Jura is a place unto itself and not for the timid palate.

As my interest in whites grow, I’m putting more time and money into them. The red wine bias I had is over, and my next area of exploration is age-worthy Oregon chardonnays. Since August I’ve put away multiple bottles each from Adelsheim, Domaine Serene and Domaine Drouhin (plus viognier from Penner-Ash) that I’ll start exploring in the next few years, and when we hit the early 2020’s I’ll start opening the bottles from Cameron that I’ve laid down. In the meantime, I see plenty of white wine on my horizon.